• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.155-164
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• 2002

Methodology to evaluate the effective doses to adults undergoing various diagnostic x-ray examinations were established by Monte Carlo simulation of the x-ray examinations. Anthropomorphic mathematical phantoms, the MIRD5 male phantom and the ORNL female phantom, were used as the target body and x-ray spectra were produced by the x-ray spectrum generation code SPEC78. The computational procedure was validated by comparing the resulting doses to the results of NRPB studies for the same diagnostic procedures. The effective doses as well as the organ doses due to chest, abdomen, head and spine examinations were calculated for x-rays incident from AP, PA, LLAT and RLAT directions. For instance, the effective doses from the most common procedures, chest PA and abdomen AP, were 0.029 mSv and 0.44 mSv, respectively. The fact that the effective dose from PA chest x-ray is far lower than the traditional value of 0.3 mSv(or 30 mrem), which results partly from the advances of technology in diagnostic radiology and partly from the differences in the dose concept employed, emphasizes necessities of intensive assessment of the patient doses in wide ranges of medical exposures. The methodology and tools established in this study can easily be applied to dose assessments for other radiology procedures; dose from CT examinations, dose to the fetus due to examinations of pregnant women, dose from pediatric radiology.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.93-99
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• 2001

Voxel head phantom for overcoming the limitation of mathematical phantom in depleting anatomical details was constructed and example dose calculation for BNCT was performed. The repeated structure algorithm of the general purpose Monte Carlo code, MCNP4B was applied for yokel Monte Carlo calculation. Simple binary yokel phantom and combinatorial geometry phantom composed of two materials were constructed for validating the voxel Monte Carlo calculation system. The tomographic images of VHP man provided by NLM(National Library of Medicine) were segmented and indexed to construct yokel head phantom. Comparison of doses for broad parallel gamma and neutron beams in AP and PA directions showed decrease of brain dose due to the attenuation of neutron in eye balls in case of yokel head phantom. The spherical tumor volume with diameter, 5cm was defined in the center of brain for BNCT dose calculation in which accurate 3 dimensional dose calculation is essential. As a result of BNCT dose calculation for downward neutron beam of 10keV and 40keV, the tumor dose is about doubled when boron concentration ratio between the tumor to the normal tissue is $30{\mu}g/g$ to $3{\mu}g/g$. This study established the voxel Monte Carlo calculation system and suggested the feasibility of precise dose calculation in therapeutic radiology.